Platform Update for Windows 7

When installed on Windows 7, the Platform Update for Windows 7 updates Windows 7 with functionality available in Windows 8. For example, these Windows 8 components become available with full functionality:

Direct2D 1.1 (including Direct2D Effects)

DirectWrite

Windows Imaging Component (WIC)

These provide partial functionality:

Direct3D 11.1

DXGI 1.2

And, for example, this component is not available:

DirectComposition (DComp)

See these topics for info about Direct2D, DirectWrite, and WIC with the platform update:

After the platform update has been installed, the interfaces introduced in Direct3D11.1 and DXGI 1.2 will be available with partial functionality. The features of these graphics components are tied directly to the graphics kernel components, graphics drivers, and graphics hardware. Before using Direct3D11.1 on Windows 7, be familiar with these specifics:

Windows 8 introduced the WDDM 1.2 driver model, which provided improvements across the associated API surface for all feature levels. When reading the Direct3D11.1 documentation, understand that new drivers means WDDM 1.2 drivers. These updated driver versions, as well as most optional features exposed through CheckFeatureSupport, are unavailable on Windows 7. Since there is no guarantee that these optional features are available, make sure your applications have appropriate fallback behaviors in the event that the desired functionality is unavailable.

There’s one important exception. Several features, such as PSSetConstantBuffers1 with constant buffer offsets, require new drivers for feature level 10 and higher, but are actually emulated for feature level 9. This emulation is available on Windows 7 with the platform update. See D3D11_FEATURE_DATA_D3D11_OPTIONS for more info about which features are emulated.

The Windows 8 WDDM 1.2 driver model supports a new generation of hardware, exposed through D3D feature level 11.1. Windows 7 with the platform update supports only the WDDM 1.1 driver model and therefore, feature level 11.1 hardware support is not available (through the platform update). On Windows 7 with the platform update, D3D11CreateDevice always returns a feature level of 11.0 or lower, except for with a reference device that can be used to test an 11.1 code path on Windows 7. Only use features available at your target feature levels, as described in the feature level reference.

Some new methods introduced in DGXI 1.2 are not fully supported with the Platform Update for Windows 7.You can test for the availability of these functions by calling them directly and checking for an error code. Make sure your applications targeting Windows 7 with the platform update have a fallback in place when the desired functionality is unavailable. These classes of features are unavailable on Platform Update for Windows 7:

Stereo

Swapchains not targeting Hwnds

Occlusion status notifications

Desktop duplication

NT Handle resources

Specifically, the following APIs will return DXGI_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED, DXGI_ERROR_INVALID_CALL, E_NOTIMPL, or E_INVALIDARG:

IDXGIDevice2::OfferResources and IDXGIDevice2::ReclaimResources are not supported on the Platform Update for Windows 7. However, the runtime still allows them to be called, and performs validation that they are being used correctly on non-shared resources.

For developers currently working on applications in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or earlier using the D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG flag, be aware that calls to D3D11CreateDevice will fail. This is because the D3D11.1 runtime now requires D3D11_1SDKLayers.dll instead of D3D11SDKLayers.dll. To get this new DLL (D3D11_1SDKLayers.dll), install the Windows 8 SDK, or Visual Studio 2012, or the Visual Studio 2012 remote debugging tools. See the Debug Layer documentation for more info. You can download Visual Studio 2012 remote debugging tools from either of these links: